This Card Game Lets You Build The Ideal Social Network — Or The Most Toxic

My societal web was booming. I had attracted top-tier users: nan coveted Trendsetter, nan popularity-lured Investor. I had bested server problems and bad press. Then, personification picked a peculiarly unlucky insubstantial retired of nan One Billion Users level I was testing. Sixty seconds later, I had mislaid it all.

One Billion Users is simply a caller insubstantial crippled from Techdirt and Diegetic Games, and astatine its best, it lends itself to moments for illustration this. Currently successful its past days connected Kickstarter, intended to money a azygous tally of nan crippled alternatively than a wide release, it’s nan latest successful a drawstring of projects from nan team-up — including nan integer games Moderator Mayhem and Trust & Safety Tycoon arsenic bully arsenic CIA: Collect It All, a insubstantial crippled built connected existent CIA training materials. 

One Billion Users is simply a batch small nerdy than immoderate of these. It’s inspired by nan comparatively elemental 1906 racing-themed insubstantial crippled Touring, amended known done a celebrated 1950s accommodation called Mille Bornes. Only, alternatively of trying to thrust nan fastest while sandbagging competitors, you’re trying to build nan biggest societal web while sabotaging everyone else.

The game, for 2 to 4 players, involves drafting and playing cards that will either thief build your ain societal level aliases extremity personification different from expanding theirs. The astir basal is simply a “community” card, which represents a number of users joining a platform. Since nan extremity is to outpace everyone else’s growth, you tin too play “blocker” cards (like “low connected funds” aliases “server overload”) connected an opponent’s network, either limiting aliases wholly stopping them from putting down statement cards. If a blocker is played connected you, you tin resoluteness it by playing a “hotfix” insubstantial (“server upgrade,” for instance) aliases sacrificing a definite number of different cards.

Techdirt laminitis Mike Masnick says that while mulling a follow-up to nan CIA insubstantial game, he was inspired by playing Mille Bornes pinch his family, past discovering its nationalist domain predecessor Touring. The squad considered a less different themes — “espionage, cryptocurrency, AI, and moreover nan wide judge of tech entrepreneurs,” Masnick says. They settled connected societal networks, and One Billion Users was born.

Admittedly, astir networks don’t — as acold arsenic nan nationalist knows — locomotion a batch of clip trying to virtually break competitors’ sites. But while nan blocker strategy mostly grew retired of its guidelines material, Masnick still says it “generally felt realistic successful tone,” peculiarly arsenic companies effort to capitalize connected each other’s problems. (Masnick sits connected nan committee of Bluesky, which has precocious lured millions of Twitter refugees by doing precisely that.) And successful nan game’s defense, retrieve erstwhile Facebook and Twitter started sabotaging each other’s friend-finding tools?

One Billion Users’ halfway look is very akin to Touring and Mille Bornes — you’re adding users alternatively of mileage, playing blockers alternatively of car breakdowns, and resolving them pinch hotfixes alternatively of things for illustration spare tires. But nan crippled adds a less major, thematically owed mechanics.

The first ample alteration is simply a mechanic called “toxicity.” Every statement insubstantial successful your web adds a varying magnitude of it, and if your ratio of toxicity to users astatine nan extremity of nan crippled is excessively high, you’ll beryllium penalized. It too matters occasionally passim nan game: a “toxic culture” blocker, for instance, intends you tin only adhd highly toxic statement cards to your network.

The 2nd is influencers: cards representing big-time users pinch dedicated communities, which are drawn and automatically handed to nan subordinate who meets their condition. Common conditions spot joining nan biggest aliases smallest network, but location are overmuch idiosyncratic ones, for illustration nan Contrarian, who’s drawn to nan astir toxic network. Players tin bargain influencers from each other, fundamentally conducting nan insubstantial crippled type of Microsoft’s Mixer signing Ninja.

Another added spot of complexity are “event” cards, which either temporarily alteration nan rules of play aliases require everyone to return an action. That unlucky insubstantial above, for instance, forced each influencer to reevaluate which web they were joining… and it turned out, my statement nary longer served their needs.

Where Trust & Safety Tycoon is simply a beautiful rigorous (if tongue-in-cheek) effort to convey really difficult moving a societal web is, One Billion Users is acold overmuch impressionistic. Its cards clasp immoderate commentary connected societal media and nan tech industry, but its entreaty remains very akin to nan restitution of screwing complete different drivers pinch roadworthy hazards. Conversely, if you’ve knowledgeable nan vexation of being perpetually stalled by hazards successful Mille Bornes, One Billion Users makes it easier to spread them — but my play group still often sewage stuck successful doldrums.

My playthroughs of One Billion Users varied dense based connected really nan level was stacked. It was imaginable to extremity up pinch a nosy equilibrium of maturation and sabotage. It was too easy to extremity up pinch a manus stuffed pinch hotfix cards during galore rounds wherever cipher was playing blockers aliases a bunch of influencer-stealing cards successful a crippled wherever nary of nan influencers had yet appeared. Also, cipher I played pinch wanted to tally its reasonably analyzable points strategy astatine nan end, including nan toxicity penalty. (There’s an optional mechanic that adds different conditions themed aft circumstantial networks — it’s a nosy idea, but too moreover overmuch tallying.) On our internet, whoever signed up nan astir users won, worth of life beryllium damned. 

One Billion Users’ nonstop rules are still successful flux, and it’s imaginable immoderate of this will change. But ultimately, arsenic a longtime spectator of societal media shenanigans, my favourite information was deciding which societal web I was building. My influencer-filled stronghold? The aureate spot of Twitter. Its sad, quiet shell? Now I was moving X.

Apparently, I wasn’t nan only 1 doing that. “I find it absorbing to spot really networks successful nan crippled beautiful quickly create a benignant of culture,” Masnick says. One of his testers, a precocious schooler, realized midway done nan crippled that his web was hopelessly and intractably toxic. His response, announced to nan remainder of nan array arsenic he embraced nan chaos? “He was ‘going afloat Reddit.’”